Galactic Interactions

Starting a new blog

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 11:38:28 -0500

Since this blog has shut down (and, really, after this post there will be no more new posts here), I've started up a new blog whose focus will be slightly different.

Go check out my new blog, Second Sight, if you are at all interested.

"Foo!" to "Are we shortening the Universe's life by observing it?"

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 11:16:00 -0500

(I know I'm not doing this any more, but I couldn't resist.)

An article in New Scientist reports on musing by two reasonable and respected cosmologists— indeed, ones whom I've met myself— that our discovery of dark energy may have shortened the life of the Universe.

To which I can only say "foo". And I say "foo" on two levels. Primarily, on the sensational way in which this is described by New Scientist. But secondarily, on the interpretations of quantum mechanics that respectable cosmologists are promoting.

First of all, for a bit of perspective. The actual research paper on which this article is based is available at arxiv.org, from which I will quote the end of the concluding paragraphs:

The second consideration is even more interesting. If observations of quantum mechanical systems reset their clocks, which has been observed for laboratory systems, then by measuring the existence dark energy in our own universe have we reset the quantum mechanical configuration of our own universe so that late time will never be relevant? Put another way, can internal observations of the state of a metastable universe affect its longevity?

They are asking the question.... And what do we get out of "New Scientist"? Cosmologists observing the Universe may have shortened the life of the Universe! Geez.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

UPDATE : memory hole not coming

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:44:06 -0500

My overlords at scienceblogs.com have informed me that they will, in fact, maintain the archives of Galactic Interactions indefinitely. Thanks to them! They are really a class outfit.

Read the comments on this post...

Note: warning of impending memory hole

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:51:54 -0500

My Seed overlords have let me know that as I have decided to no longer continue this blog, I won't be able to keep the backlogs here indefinitely. Sometime in the next couple of months, the archives will disappear from this site.

I also plan to take down the archives from the blog's former site, in part of an ongoing effort to make it so that people at Vanderbilt don't have to depend on me to maintain computers there.

I have not decided yet if it is going to be worth the effort to try to set up archives on an independent site for posterity. Likely this will not happen. If there is anything you've ever read here that you think you want archived— either because you thought it was worth reading, or because you think you might want to send me abuse about it later— you will want to make copies of it now.

Blog going on indefinite hiatus

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:30:00 -0500

I am going to take a break from astronomy blogging for an indefinite period of time.

I'm finding that as I'm involved in my new job, while I still do get a charge out of posts like the Big Bang post I did the other day, my heart isn't 100% in this.

Also, after the deleted post yesterday, I'm just too digusted with the nature of academia at our forefront research institutions (and with Vanderbilt in particular-- as anybody who reads this knows, I already bore a fair amount of bitterness towards that institution, and now I have a huge amount of disgust with Vanderbilt's Physics department). Yes, in the past I got a lot of mileage out of echoing those complaints, and I know that I hit something of a chord because of the response I received. Heck, even to this day news stories get generated in part by my own meta-issues with academia. But the fact is that I'm out of it now, and I'm finding myself really wanting to move on and not remain so mired in the issues that drove me into clinical depression and eventually drove me out of the field. They are not my problem now, and I'm not enough of the crusader type to want to fix the world even though I've been booted from it.

I truly do regret having to give up teaching college. Ironically, yesterday when I visited Vanderbilt, I also dropped by the Society of Physics Students meeting, and really enjoyed meeting and saying "hello" to the students. I loved the science, I loved the teaching, and I loved interacting with the students... but the academic politics and the nutty standards of "rigor" that Universities think they are applying wrecked it all. And learning what I learned about the academic politics reminded me that, yes, however wistful I may have been in the interactions with students, I made the right decision by fleeing that environment.

The fact is that my heart just is not in this astronomy blogging gig right now. I have moved on, and I really want to move on. I will make myself unhappy if I continued to be mired in what I was mired in before. And, the fact is that I don't have enough left over cognitive energy to be making the kinds of astronomy breaking news and pedagogical posts that composed what I think were the best of Galactic Interactions. Astronomy and teaching remain two of my passions, and some day I may try to come back to it. In the the mean time, however, farewell.

It is possible at some point in the future I may change my mind, and want to start blogging again— about astronomy, or about something else. I can't predict if I'll ever be able to re-join the scienceblogs.com family, but in any event I'll link to it from my personal home page. If for whatever reason you may have some interest in that possibility, periodically check that page, as I'll assuredly drop a link there to any public blog that I'm doing.

Read the comments on this post...

Fine. The post is deleted already.

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:43:00 -0500

Commenters convinced me to think twice, and they're right.

Our system is screwed up. Never shed light on anything, because you're small and it could hurt you. If a festering wound exists somewhere, just try to get away. Don't try to point it out. Especially if it's not your problem any more.

Choose your battles, and let other places that are screwed up stay screwed up.

A lawyer on retainer. Jesus Christ. No, I'm not going to jail, but civil law practically limits the reality of free speech in this fucked up and litigious society.

Read the comments on this post...

Protecting celebreties? Or just more creeping censorship?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:51:00 -0500

An hour or so ago I heard a story on NPR about California's new "Dead Celebrities" law. In a nutshell, it allows the heirs of a celebrity to control the use of that celebrity's image after said celebrity's death... even if at the time of the celebrity's death, the right to bequeath this power didn't exist.

I always find these sorts of stories depressing, because there is an important perspective that is lost. In the story, we hear that one side of the legal thinks it boils down to one simple question:

"How can a celebrity's legacy be protected, and who can do that?"

But he's wrong. There is another simple question we could be asking here:

Are we such a celebrity-obsessed culture that we will give celebrities the power to limit our freedom of expression even from beyond the grave?

To often, in stories about expansion of what is called "intellectual property rights" (i.e. exclusive copyrights, patents, and trademarks), we hear about how it's "property," and how violation of these things is theft. Very, very, rarely do we hear the fact that these things are also limitations on freedom of expression.. Indeed, the conflict this NPR story focuses on is entitled "Whose Property?", and the other side of the lawsuit is a guy who wants to continue to profit by selling licensing rights to his father's photographs:

"It's against the Constitution to take away someone's property," Greene said. "Somebody can't come in and take away your property. You own it. Your father, let's say, composed a piece of music. Now, all of a sudden, someone else is going to come in and say, 'We're going to take over your rights.' I beg your pardon?"

Here, the side against this expression-squelching law has completely accepted the notion that "intellectual property" is just like other forms of property.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have copyrights or trademarks at all. I am saying, however, that the very terms of the debate stilt the debate towards copyright maximalism, and ever expanding copyright restrictions and terms... and that we have lost sight of the fact that copyright is a sacrifice of our freedom of expression, and its benefits need to be evaluated against that sacrifice.

Let us suppose this California law becomes the standard, a federal law or widely adopted amongst all the states. Now suppose that 50 years from now somebody writes an article entitled "Where It All Went Wrong" about early 21st century American presidential politics, and wanted to include the following image (which I grabbed from the US Dept. of State website):

To do so, the article's author would have to get permission from four estates: the estate of G. W. Bush, the estate of D. Cheney, the estate of C. Rice, and the estate of the photographer.

Does this sound to you like the legal landscape of a society that values freedom of expression?

Read the comments on this post...

Supernovae: the source of cosmic rays

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:50:00 -0500

Astronomers have long assumed that supernovae are the source of at least most of the cosmic rays that hit Earth.

Woah, slow down... cosmic rays? Right, you hear the term all the time, but do you really know what they are? They are charged particles that rain down on Earth from space. Really! Kinda cool, huh? There are charged particles— mostly protons, or hydrogen nuclei, but with some heavier ions mixed in— smacking into our atmosphere all the time. Some of them have extremely high energies, higher energies than those to which we can accelerate particles in our best particle physics accelerators. Of course, the very highest energy cosmic rays are the rarest.

Thanks to a recent study by the Chandra Space Telescope, we have direct confirmation of the model that cosmic rays are produced in supernovae.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

If you thought Physics was misogynistic, try open source software!

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:02:44 -0500

There are days when I want to stand on the rooftops and scream like Zuska.

I'm no longer in academia, but as those who are longtime readers of my blog know, I became painfully aware of how sexist the culture of Physics is and how amazingly unequal the playing field is for women— not just, or not even primarily, because of differential standards, but because of the atmosphere that is created by that culture. I also became painfully aware how amazingly in denial a lot of men (and even a few women) are about the pervasive and sinister effects of that atmosphere.

One would often see borderline open misogyny hiding behind protestations that Physics needed to maintain their "meritocracy" — the existence of which I have argued previously is a myth. (And before you get all huffy and point out that I'm just sour grapes because I "wasn't good enough" to stay in academia myself, bear in mind that not only did I win multiple awards for my research, including one from Vanderbilt itself, before Vanderbilt made it clear that I wasn't going to get tenure, but also that I held these opinions back when things were still looking promising for my future at that place.)

In Free Software, however it's far worse.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

NPR's Science Friday with a (Second) Live Studio Audience

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:05:00 -0500

If you listened to Science Friday on NPR's Talk of the Nation today, you may have heard Ira Flatow mention a question from "Prospero Linden"— that was me. I was there, live, along with a 30 or 40 other people in the studio audience:

For the last several weeks, Science Friday has been simulcasting over NPR and in Second Life, using Nashville's WPLN audio stream for the purpose. (I had nothing to do with that!) Meanwhile, Ira Flatley, the 2nd life avatar of Ira Flatow (and his extensive staff), together with hosts, listen to and repeat on air the occasional question that comes from the sundry people present. Meanwhile, all of us carry on a text conversation about what we're hearing on the radio, sometimes with various tangents.

If you're interested in this drop by next week. Science Friday is hosted in the Science School region in Second Life.

Answering Objections to the Big Bang

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:34:20 -0500

Every so often you will come across somebody who has a "killer" list of "problems" with the Big Bang. While there remain unknowns and questions about the Big Bang— just as there do with biological evolution— the basic picture of the Big Bang is rock solid— just like evolution.

Nearly two months ago, I received a query from somebody who found my name through the Clergy Letter Project "expert database" regarding one of the websites that lists these objects. I've been through quite a number of life changes in the last 6-8 weeks, and my blogging rate has suffered as a result. However, I'm finally getting to it. Nearly all of the things I will respond to here are generic responses, as these "objections" to the Big Bang are frequently brought up, but for reference I will link to the site that was given to me: Dr. Tom van Flandern's Top 30 Problems with the Big Bang. Nearly all of these objects are either a misunderstanding of the Big Bang, or an objection that is out of date. I won't address all 30 individually, but I will hit some of the highlights. The fact that I don't address a given objection should not be taken as evidence that I'm ceding the point!

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The Gruber Prize Ceremony

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:50:00 -0500

Hello from England! Last night was the award ceremony for the 2007 Gruber Prizer in Cosmology. It was good to meet up with the members of the SCP again, many of whom I haven't seen in several years. Picture below is the members of the collaboration who were present, underneath one of the many trees labelled as "Newton's Apple Tree" in the UK; this one is at Trinity college, and apparently is a descendant of the original tree from the apocryphal story about the apple falling on Newton's head. Here we are all looking for apples of our own, but evidently these apples are made of dark energy and as such are not falling into gravitational potential wells....

At the awards ceremony, a number of people spoke. I want to comment on three things that people said. First, Jim Peebles, one of the previous winners of this award, thanked the awardees for two things. First, for solving one problem: the mass density of the Universe, and fixing the cosmological "age crisis" through the measurement of a positive cosmological constant. Second, for the introduction of a new conundrum: just what is this cosmological constant or dark energy stuff? There's nothing scientists like better than a good conundrum.

The two individual winners of the award, Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, each spoke, and each had similar themes to what they said. Saul started by noting that there is this popular image of the lone scientist working on brilliant discoveries all himself, but often it doesn't work that way. He then went through a serious of snapshot images he has in his head of the process of discovering the acceleration of the Universe, mentioning the names of each of the rest of his team who were present. (About me, he said that I type and program faster than he talks... and if you've heard Saul talk, that's saying something!)

Brian Schmidt, likewise, came up and said that he wasn't speaking for him, but he was speaking as the representative of the High-Z team. He said that a lot of the problems that are present in science today can not besolved be individuals, despite the fact that many prizes are still given to individuals. Rather, they are solved by teams.

It is significant to me that half of this award went to not individuals, but to the teams of which Saul and Brian were leaders. There were many, many contributions all worthy of recognition.

If I were more cynical I might say that Saul and Brian were just saying what they were supposed to say, facing the fact that about 1/3 of the people in the audience were the other team members.... However, I am not that cynical. I really believe that what Saul and Brian said was heartfelt. I appreciate both of them and the Gruber Foundation for so publically recognizing that this discovery did require teams, and that those teams were worth of honor.

I close with just one picture from the dinner later last evening. Alex Kim, who is pictured, was a graduate student at UC Berkeley when I and Peter Nugent arrived as post-docs in 1996. Ironically, Alex Kim defended his thesis in late 1996, but both Peter and I defended our theses in early spring 1997... for a while, the post-docs didn't exactly yet have their PhDs, but the grad student did! You can see that Alex (now a permanent staff member at LBNL, after a stint as a post-doc in Paris) has done well, for he seems to have located a new standard candle....

Photograph by Nelson Nunes

Read the comments on this post...

Offline for a few more days

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:55:07 -0500

I"m sorry the blog's been so quiet recently. With my new job, and my trip out to SF getting started at Linden these last two weeks, I've been quite busy! Things won't settle down until next week, as I'm off to the UK for the next for days for the Gruber Prize award ceremony. I'll be back next week and trying to settle into a routine, after which hopefully I'll be getting to some of my mentally queued posts including one on the Coriolis Effect, one answering common criticisms you may see about the Big Bang, and hopefully one on the bigass void that some of you have read about.

Read the comments on this post...

Is the result about the subjects, or about the test?

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:40:00 -0500

I haven't read the study— it would take some digging to find, after all!— only the CNN Article, but the title sums up half of the results: "Men want hot women, study confirms."

In a nutshell, the study found that in a speed-dating test, men, despite what they said they were looking for, almost always went for the most physically attractive women (measured I am not sure how). Women, meanwhile, went for a man whose "desirability" (again, measured I am not sure how) matched their own assessment of how attractive they are.

The conclusion the article claims is that humans, despite high-minded language about looking for people who share their interests and values, seek out mates based primarily on physical attractiveness.

I want to suggest an alternate hypothesis. That is, "speed dating" is a shallow process that leads people to making judgments based on shallow criteria. Seems possible, no? I mean, even after an intense 3 minutes of conversation, can you really do a whole lot better judging how interested you are in a person than you can viewing a photograph?

It always bothers me to see news stories making (or just accepting) facile conclusions that come from studies where there are obvious potential biases built in to the methodology of the study without even acknowledging that that is something that one should think about.

Update: There is some analysis of what makes a face attractive, inspired by this same news story, at The Anterior Commissure. Hat tip: Cognitive Daily.

Read the comments on this post...

Book review : Storm World by Chris Mooney

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:45:00 -0500

Read this book.

First and formost for a book review: Storm World is a good read. You will not find yourself bogged down or forcing yourself to push through a book that's "good for you." You will keep reading because you will want to know more.

As for the book itself: Mooney clearly has a point of view in the book, and does not hide it. However, that point of view is considered based on the evidence, and he also admits that it is not exactly the same as the point of view he expected to have when starting research for the book. This is not a polemic, it is not a "the sky is falling, we're all gonna die!" rant about hurricans and global warming. Even if you are one who is inclined to doubt all of that, I strongly encourge you to consider reading this book.

The book is really about two things. First, it's a historical and present account of our increasing understanding of just what hurricanes are, including that there still is a lot about them that we don't understand. Second, it's an examination of the scientific process which is in many ways more honest and true to reality than many of the sugar-coated versions of the scientific process that we hear.

Read the rest of this post... |

Galactic Interactions

Starting a new blog

"Foo!" to "Are we shortening the Universe's life by observing it?"

UPDATE : memory hole *not* coming

Note: warning of impending memory hole

Blog going on indefinite hiatus

Fine. The post is deleted already.

Protecting celebreties? Or just more creeping censorship?

Supernovae: the source of cosmic rays

If you thought Physics was misogynistic, try open source software!

NPR's Science Friday with a (Second) Live Studio Audience

Answering Objections to the Big Bang

The Gruber Prize Ceremony

Offline for a few more days

Is the result about the subjects, or about the test?

Book review : Storm World by Chris Mooney

UPDATE : memory hole not coming